TIL that Valley Water Hired a Private Detective to Follow Me and Ring My Doorbell, Relentlessly (using public funds)
Today I learned from Valley Water’s District Counsel J. Carlos Orellana that the man he sent to my door after dark on February 7 was not a Valley Water employee, as I mistakenly believed, but was, instead, a Private Detective dressed as a Valley Water employee. Of course, a Private Detective dressed in a Valley Water uniform! How could I not have guessed?
Mr. Orellana, who is paid in the high six-figures to represent the interests of this $10 billion agency, today attempted to call me a liar for believing that the man who appeared at my door dressed in a Valley Water polo shirt and wearing a Valley Water dad hat was a Valley Water employee. How stupid of me to think that a man dressed in a Valley Water uniform holding a file printed on Valley Water stationary worked for Valley Water! Actually, said Mr. Orrelana, the guy wearing Valley Water clothes holding a Valley Water file, was not a Valley Water employee. He was Private Detective in disguise. Joke’s on me.
This Detective, said Orrelana, was not an actual Valley Water employee despite dressing as one, but he was, Orellana claimeed, a valid process server, even though the Detective delivered no documents subject to service of process, such as a Court Summons. To Orellana, pretending to be an employee does not make someone an employee, but pretending to be a process server delivering Court Summons (yet not delivering a court summons or anything that process servers deliver) makes a person a process server.
Mr. Orellana is one of the highest paid government agency lawyers in the state, and maybe in the country. He should know better than to send a fake employee/fake process server to the home of an elected Director late at night. He should know better than to instruct or allow his fake employee/fake process server to ring my door, incessantly, for ten minutes.
Mr. Orellana thankfully made no attempt to justify his Private Detective’s ten minutes of malicious, unrelenting, inexorable door-bell ringing. He made no attempt to apologize for that either.
Lesson learned: if someone wearing a Valley Water District uniform comes to your door, pretend not to be home. It may be a Private Detective in disguise carrying sham documents, and bearing a malevolent and unstoppable doorbell-ringing trigger finger.
